Tommy Steed lives in upstate New York. He has bees, a border collie named Pete, and

a pickup truck with a bumper sticker saying he's a member of the local fishing game club.

But before retiring, Tommy worked on the telephone lines.

I started working for New York telephone in 1971, in neighborhoods like Harlem, Bedford

Styruson, and Brooklyn, and the South Bronx.

Tommy was hired as a cable splacer. In this job, he had to maintain and install telephone

cables, sometimes 20 feet up in the air, sometimes underground.

We would wipe the ends with solder, molten solder, and run a scene down the middle.

Make sure it was not one single bubble because that cable is going into a manhole for the

next hundred years.

Tommy enjoyed his job, the camaraderie of the cruise, and being outside all day.

But after about 15 years of work, something unexpected happened.

Maybe about 1978. I went down to our medical department in Manhattan.

It was a routine annual examination. And about two weeks later, my boss came out and said,

you have to go back to medical department. And I said, what for it? And he said, they didn't

tell me. They just said they need to draw blood.

But afternoon, Tommy made his way downtown to the company's medical department.

And I went to the front desk and they gave me my file. And they told me to walk down this

long hallway, make a left at the end, and it'll be an open door with a nurse that'll take

my blood. So walking down the hall, I was curious, you know, like, what the hell did he want

my blood for? So I opened up my file and there was a yellow sticky note test for lead only.

Lead. The results of this test would show that Tommy's lead levels were off the charts.

...